


Maneli

by drinkbloodlikewine, whiskeyandspite



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Alchemy, Angst, Fantasy AU, Fluff, Longing, M/M, canon character death, fairytale logic, mermaid au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-06
Updated: 2014-10-06
Packaged: 2018-02-20 04:16:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 17,242
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2414630
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drinkbloodlikewine/pseuds/drinkbloodlikewine, https://archiveofourown.org/users/whiskeyandspite/pseuds/whiskeyandspite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>"Alright," Will says, "a test of faith, then. Tonight, in your room, put the shell to your ear and listen. If I speak the truth and you can hear the ocean's song, you will return it to me tomorrow."</i>
</p><p>
  <i>"And if you lie?"</i>
</p><p>
  <i>"I cannot lie."</i>
</p><p>In a mythical land much like our own, a little count meets another little boy on the beach. They are much the same and utterly different; this little boy has a tail where his legs should be, and lives in the ocean.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Another [commission](wwhiskeyandbloodd.tumblr.com/donate), this time for the lovely [Alexis](http://dragon--zero.tumblr.com/), who gave us this awesome prompt to work with: "I'm an avid fan of fantasy, mythos, and the supernatural. I would love a story playing on one of these elements! Maybe even in a past setting- though modern mixed with myth holds a thrilling appeal."
> 
> We have set it in the past in that alchemy is considered a modern and new development. But we've also made fairytale laws apply here, so anything is possible really. We hope you enjoy it, love, and we hope that there is enough supernatural and fantasy elements to keep you entertained! Thank you again, so much, for your commission!!

The forests are thick where Hannibal lives, in the castle up the way. The path that he follows is long and winding, but he is not afraid, even when it becomes very dark beneath the trees. Hannibal knows, as his mother always told him, that as long as he doesn’t step off the trail, no matter what he sees or hears, he can’t be touched by the things that live there.

But the path splits wide at the edge of the woods and fans out into the tall grasses, nearly past the top of his head. They rustle and sway in the wind from the sea, and for a moment Hannibal imagines that they are bending towards the little count like the servants do. He hesitates, though, a furrow in his brow, and stops just where the grasses bow to survey the path as it spreads into the sand.

His mother always told him that as long as he stays on the trail, he can’t be touched, but what should he do when the trail ends? He hasn’t come this far before, not without attendants, not ever alone, but the sky is golden bright and the sand is brilliant white and he hums to himself. What could touch him here, so far from the shadows of the woods, and if the path spreads into the sand, then isn’t it all just a path?

Hannibal squints at the sun, reflecting in flashes of light from the great blue sea before him. It’s very close to where he stands, at the edge of the grasses now, just a little walk across the sun-hot sand to where the waves beckon against the shore.

He removes his shoes by the grass so they won’t be scuffed, and tucks his socks inside, rolling his pant legs up to his knobby knees. If he’s very careful, they’ll never know that he adventured so far today, and so he sets off across the beach to where the water curls salty sweet and slips back again.

“Much better,” the little count says to himself as he sinks his toes into the dark sand, cool and thick, and the water whitens around his ankles.

For a moment he stands, hands on his hips and surveying the ocean. They cannot own the ocean, his father had said, no one could. It came and went with the tides, a living creature all on its own.

Hannibal looks down to watch another wave bring sand with it in an easy sigh and retreat, leaving it over Hannibal’s feet like an offering, sinking him further where he stands. He wiggles his toes and frees himself again. Another wave and much the same, and Hannibal delights in watching himself sink, standing still for several waves at a time before pulling himself free, triumphant, as though he has fooled the ocean and held his own.

And then a wave brings with it a seashell, small enough to fit into Hannibal's hand, blue and swirling, round like a pebble but pointed at one end. He crouches, careful to hold it up and look, turn it over in his hand again and again. On the delicate lip, he finds a hole, small, the sun slipping through it to draw a circle on his palm, tiny, if he holds it up to play with the shadow. Hannibal grins before pushing himself to stand and moving to put the little shell into his pocket.

"That's not yours!" comes a voice, and Hannibal nearly trips in his panic. He looks around, behind himself into the tall grasses, before, into the blue, blue sea, and sees nothing. He hesitates before trying to pocket the shell again.

"It's not _yours_ ," the voice insists again, and this time Hannibal thinks he sees something behind one of the huge boulders that sits almost suspended in the sea.

"Who's there?"

But only silence again, the ocean keeping its secrets. Hannibal chews his lip, frowns.

"If you don't come to claim this, I claim it as my own,” he declares.

"That wouldn't be very fair.” The voice seems almost clearer now, and this time, when something moves above the boulder, Hannibal can see it. A head of shaggy, fluffy hair, curled wildly from the salt and sun, and eyes so blue they put the little shell to shame. A little boy.

"If no one comes to claim you, does that mean the ocean can?" the boy asks, tilting his head, arms folded on the rock as he rests against it.

It’s a good question, and Hannibal considers it for a moment before he nods, decided.

“Yes,” he calls back. “If the ocean can catch me, then it can claim me. But until then, I claim only myself.” The little count puffs a little, and lifts his chin just the way he’s seen his father do.

“Anyway,” Hannibal adds, “since I’ve found it just here on the shore, that must mean the ocean hasn’t claimed it any more.”

A silence, consideration from the other boy. Hannibal steps a little closer. The boulder sits farther in the water than he dare venture alone, but he stops directly across from it, now, so they can hold a conversation. The boy looks no older than he.

"You said if I didn't come to claim this you would take it," the boy points out, shrugging his shoulders and bringing a hand up to rub the side of his nose gently. "I am calling in my claim for it."

He sets both hands to the rock again and Hannibal can see that he’s holding himself up on it, not merely resting.

"On what grounds?"

The blue eyes narrow, confused.

"I was playing and it slipped from my neck," the boy says. “What held it on split and it was taken by the sea, but the shell washed up on shore. It's mine."

Hannibal hums, considering the boy’s words and the shell in his hand, hidden safe within his pocket.

“Prove your claim,” he declares, and the other boy’s eyes widen again. Hannibal shrugs, dark eyes glinting with how very clever he thinks himself to be. “You can’t simply say something is yours and then it is. There are laws and rules. Otherwise I could say that boulder belongs to my father and you have no right to sit on it.”

He comes closer, meandering across the hot sand, and stands beneath the rock to look up towards the boy, arm’s reach away. The boy frowns, and folds his arms to rest his chin on them and look down at Hannibal, blonde and regal beneath him.

“How can I?”

“Tell me something about the shell. If it’s yours, you must know it very well.”

It’s a funny sort of game, but Hannibal so rarely gets to play with anyone at all at the castle. There aren’t any other boys who live there, and there isn’t a town or another castle close at all.

Around the boulder, waves softly circle, curling beneath it as if intent on digging it free. Sometimes they reach just far enough to tickle Hannibal's toes, then retreat. Above him, the boy chews his lip.

"It has a little hole in it, just on the lip,” he tells him. “The string was woven through there, but it's split."

Hannibal frowns.

"The ocean could have made that."

"The ocean did not. But you asked for proof and I gave it to you, so give it back to me."

Hannibal shakes his head.

"It has to be something more. Something about it that no one else could know or assume."

A gentle shift of curls as the boy flops down onto his arms again. For a moment, they are both quiet, Hannibal curious and the boy thoughtful. Then he sits up, suddenly, leans further over the rock and grins, pointing.

"If you hold it to your ear and close your eyes, it will sing you the ocean's song,” He tells him. Hannibal looks skeptical.

"We are too near the ocean," he says, shaking his head. “If I put it to my ear I cannot be sure I don’t hear the real ocean instead."

The boy opens his mouth to argue, closes it, and then turns back as though hearing something Hannibal cannot. When he returns his eyes to him, he's smiling.

"Alright," he says, "a test of faith, then. Tonight, in your room, put it to your ear and listen. If I speak the truth and you can hear the ocean's song, you will return it to me tomorrow."

"And if you lie?"

"I cannot lie."

Hannibal opens his mouth to argue the improbability of this, but suddenly around the boulder comes a much larger wave and sweeps him from his feet, knocking him to sit in the water up to his shoulders until the wave slips back to the sea.

The boy’s laugh is like a bell, delighted and warm, and he looks at Hannibal, drenched and wide-eyed, before smiling wide and relenting.

"What's your name?"

"Hannibal Lecter, and it's very rude to laugh at people," the boy answers, raising his chin as though it were a proper introduction, rather than one in which he is drenched in seawater. He is careful not to say his title to this boy, as his father taught him. One never knows where there may be bandits waiting to kidnap little counts, and hold them up for ransom. "Who are you?"

"William," the dark-haired boy responds, eyes twinkling amusement as the sea floats calmly around Hannibal's ankles again.

"Where do you come from?"

"Near. You come from the castle on the hill, don't you?"

Hannibal blinks, surprised, and glances towards the woods. He can't see the castle from the beach, though he knows that in the distance it rises above the trees.

"Yes. I live in the castle." He tries not to think of how much trouble he'll find himself in when he returns, for getting his clothes all wet and sandy when he wasn't supposed to venture so far as the sea. "How will I find you tomorrow?"

Will looks towards the woods almost with longing, before grinning down at Hannibal again.

"Just come to the sea," he tells him, "and I'll find you."

Will watches Hannibal a moment more, before slipping from the rock and out of sight.

"Wait!"

Hannibal scrambles to stand, clothes heavy with water and sand, and runs as far around the rock as he dares, but he cannot see the boy there. He frowns, concerned, and turns only when he hears a whistle, shrill and short, from far further to sea than any little boy should go.

"Tomorrow!" Will calls, voice carrying with the waves. "Bring my shell to me, okay?"

"If you spoke truth!"

"I cannot lie!" The boy laughs again, lifts his hand to wave, and Hannibal finds himself smiling as he waves back. Then Will dives, vanishes beneath the water with a flicker of something turquoise and fleshy behind himself, like a tail. Then he's just gone.

Hannibal’s mother always told him that as long as he doesn’t step off the trail, no matter what he sees or hears, he can’t be touched by the things that live there. But what if the things that live there aren’t so bad after all, and there are other little boys who live among them that only want to play?

He steps up to the edge of the water, only realizing as it washes up past his ankles how near he’s come again. On his toes then, sinking into the sand to try to see another glimpse, tempted to walk in further after him, before he feels the shell sitting heavy in his pocket. He reaches down and clutches it, and holds it tight in his fist the entire walk home.

-=-

"Use your legs."

"I can't."

"They gotta be useful for something,"

"I _can't_ , Will! I can't bend them like you bend your stupid tail." Hannibal treads water and huffs his displeasure. Will frowns at the insult but says nothing.

They're out past the cove today, in the quiet, warm pool with its own little beach where Will has been teaching Hannibal to swim. The boy has improved greatly, can now float on his own and use his hands to stay upright, but Will can't seem to be able to teach him how to use his legs.

He considers, himself upright in the water, tail working lazily beneath the clear surface to keep himself steady. The strong push and pull of unseen currents from it occasionally brushes against Hannibal's legs where they dangle uselessly in the water beneath him.

"Your legs are like two of my tails," Will finally decides, "so that will make you twice as powerful when you swim. But how…”

They have found, through much tumbling and laughing, that Hannibal cannot move like a shark does. Nor like a dolphin. And he cannot shift and turn as easily as Will can with his tail, though he is remarkably steady on land. Sometimes.

Will settles his eyes on the dark brown shell Hannibal wears around his neck, a shell Will had given him when Hannibal had returned Will’s own, and watches as the two straps of leather from the knot float just beneath it, carried by the waves. Ebb and flow, up and down, one rising when the other falls, and suddenly Will grins.

"You can alternate!" he exclaims. "Alternate which leg you use like you do when you walk!"

Hannibal’s eyes narrow a little, paddling harder when a gentle wave lifts him. “How can I?” he huffs, stubborn. “There’s no ground to push from.”

Will’s tail sweeps a current past Hannibal’s legs as he circles in front of him, hands against the top of the water.

“You push off the water, then, if there’s no ground. Like this!” He glides his hands through the clear blue water, one after the other, and Hannibal watches closely, dubious. “Just try it,” Will insists, and disappears beneath the surface to watch. His dark hair disappears from sight and unheard, Hannibal sighs towards the sky.

One foot, and then the other, kicking through the water until he feels himself begin to move through it. It takes a little while, and once or twice he feels a wave move past that pushes much too hard. Hands press against his feet to give him a ground, just long enough to recover, before the rhythm finds him and he swims a little ways towards the cove, laughing.

“Will!” he calls towards the water, pushing himself in a slow circle to look for the other boy. “Where have you gone?”

He startles as Will appears as if by magic behind him, grinning. “It worked!”

“It’s very slow,” Hannibal complains mildly, but he’s unable to keep from grinning in return, pushing his hair back from his face. “I wish I could have a tail, too.”

“You said it was stupid.” Will’s brows lift. “And if you did have one, you wouldn’t be able to get back to the castle.”

“I should like to have the choice,” Hannibal responds primly. “You must have a home, don’t you?”

Will nods, shrugs, grins, mirrors the gesture of pushing his hair back too. Hannibal has asked about Will before, his home, his family, if there were more like him. Will has never answered properly, never seen the need. But Hannibal, to his credit, has never once told another of Will's presence, of his existence here.

"It would be so strange having legs and a tail both, can you imagine?" he says instead, misdirecting, swimming around Hannibal in slow circles as the other makes it to shore and crawls to the sand. Will pushes himself to almost beach against it as well, tail flicking rainbow drops to the shore and splashing back into the shallows.

"But it would be wonderful to have wings. To soar over everything. The sky, the sea, the mountains all." Will curls his arms and rests his chin against them, eyes bright and smile wide.

His skin is pale, despite the sun that caresses it every day, morphing seamlessly to his tail, pale and dark and greying turquoise, shifting colors and strong muscle. His fins splay against the sand, now, warming with the sun, and Will allows himself to half float as he watches the other boy in his dark shorts and with his golden skin.

"It would be just as strange to have wings and a tail," Hannibal responds. "Although I suppose there are flying fish."

He watches entranced, as always, as Will lets his tail float in the shallow water, lazy flicks that send beads of water sparkling bright against his scales. He has wanted to tell a great many people about Will, and has stopped himself every time. Most would not believe him, and those who did would wish to see him, not as Hannibal's friend but as a curious creature, rarely encountered. It would be unseemly for them to gawk and stare at his friend, as adults always seem to when a rare thing is found, but he bites his lip as his own curiosity gets the better of him, again.

Hannibal leans forward onto his knees, splaying them against the sand as he sits on his heels.

"May I touch it?"

Will ducks his head against his arms and laughs. "Why?"

"Because I wish to," Hannibal responds, blinking wide.

"May I touch your legs?"

"You may." The blonde boy's eyes squint in amusement, and Will rolls onto his back, eyes closed against the sun that glistens brightly across him.

"It's only a tail."

"So then I may."

Will watches Hannibal, upside down where he's tilted his head back against the sand, and nods.

Hannibal scoots furrows into the sand with his knees, reaching to press his hand to the boy's tail. It is slick, as though still wet even as the sun warms it, smooth scales overlapping beneath his hand, pliant and soft as he glides his palm there, with strong muscles beneath. He is careful to only touch in the direction of the scales, down to one of the smaller fins at his side. Will spreads it for him, and Hannibal blinks in surprise before he slips his fingers beneath the gossamer webbing, such a thin and pale grey that he can see his hand through it.

"You feel like a very large fish," he decides, and grins.

The end of Will's tail flicks and sends a shower of droplets against Hannibal, making him laugh and wipe his face as Will grins at him, curls splayed in the sand yet - Hannibal has noticed - never truly sandy, as though sand cannot stay in it.

"My turn," Will says, rolling back to his stomach and waiting patiently as Hannibal sits to stretch his legs in front of him so Will can touch.

He draws fingers cool over Hannibal’s thighs where the shorts end, lower to his knees, frowning, splaying his fingers against them, gently moving the knee cap as Hannibal twitches and laughs at the sensation. Lower still to his calf and then his ankle, moving to bend Hannibal's knee to examine his toes closely, with almost too much enthusiasm until Hannibal pulls free with a laugh.

"It tickles."

"You are like a very absurd crab," Will decides, catching Hannibal's hand as the other swipes at him at the slight.

They are one and the same in this, at least, as Hannibal turns his wrist in Will’s hand. Palm to palm they press, fingers interlacing in a gentle squeeze.

“I brought something for you,” Hannibal declares, and releases Will’s hand to turn and push up to his feet, stumbling a little in the sand before he catches his stride and dusts the grains from his palms as he goes. His clothes have been neatly folded, resting atop a dry rock for him to change into, a convincing enough cleanliness to make it through the castle and to the bath upon his return home.

He digs in the small bag set alongside them, and tugs out something carefully wrapped in cloth, carrying it back to the shore.

“There is a special occasion at the castle today,” Hannibal says. Dropping back into the sand, he folds his legs beneath him and sets the bundle down between them. A pluck of fabric, and the ornate knots fall away to reveal two little pies, and a scattering of nuts. “Strawberry tarts and sugared almonds,” he explains, watching Will more than the food. “I helped to make them, even though I’m not supposed to be in there. The cooks allow me, and since the kitchen is their domain, I think it’s their decision to make.”

Will regards the little offerings, utterly fascinating things to him, like little corals and pods. He doesn’t reach to touch yet, but he grins, lifts his face to look at Hannibal properly.

"They smell like nothing I have ever tried. How do I eat them?"

Hannibal laughs, pressing his hands together before reaching out to take an almond between his fingers and popping it into his mouth with a grin. In crunches, satisfying, between his teeth, and he chews as he watches Will follow his lead. He's careful, examining the almond before he gently presses his tongue to it, eyes widening in delight at the taste.

"It's so sweet,” he says, setting it between his teeth to bite and finding it a challenge.

"Try with the back ones," Hannibal advises, tongue seeking almond behind his own as he watches Will try, succeed, and happily chew the treat as he regards the others.

"How do we eat the red one?" He asks.

Hannibal sits up very straight, as though at the banquet table and not on the beach, and picks up one of the little pies to hold in his hands. “Normally with silverware,” he considers, and then blinks at Will. “A knife and fork. Ah,” he hesitates, and narrows his eyes in thought. “Tools you use to make this piece into smaller pieces. You stab the smaller pieces then, and lift them to your mouth.”

Will watches Hannibal, lips parted, perplexed, and Hannibal shakes his head.

“Nevermind it, I’ll bring them next time to show you,” he decides, and instead simply lifts the tart to his mouth to take a bite. Rich preserves, syrupy red with little black seeds throughout, clings with flaky crust against his lips and his eyes crinkle, pleased. He lifts a hand to his mouth as he speaks. “Like so.”

A pause, and Hannibal notes that Will’s arms are tucked beneath him, to keep him angled upward in the sand. He considers this a moment, and instead holds out his tart for Will to take a bite, declaring solemnly, “We shall share them.”

Will blinks, eyes wide, before licking his lips and leaning forward to take a bite carefully, not to catch Hannibal's fingers between his teeth, and not to rudely eat the whole thing. 

It crumbles against his tongue, warm and sweet and flakey all at once. He makes a sound, brings fingers to his lips as Hannibal had and chews until he can swallow and speak properly.

"That's delicious,” he tells him, honest, eyes up to regard Hannibal in a whole new way - as a creator of something so magnificent and delicious that Will still can only barely fathom it. "You made this?"

"I helped," Hannibal smiles, takes the last of the pie into his mouth and flicks the crumbs to the sand from his fingers. His cheeks warm at Will’s scrutiny, and only when he’s finished chewing does he hold the second tart to Will to take the first bite.

Will has brought him such magnificent things from the sea. Shells and starfish, live fish in his cupped hands for Hannibal to see. He has brought him branches of coral and intricately dried seaweed. And every single token Hannibal has kept, has stored in his room that grows daily almost as a shrine to the sea, filled with gifts from his friend.

"What's the occasion?" Will asks suddenly, licking his lips and smiling when Hannibal comes back from his thoughts. 

He swallows the bite of tart and offers Will the last of it, laying back and stretching his arms above his head, knees drawn up and feet sunk into the sand.

“Do you have any siblings?”

Will shakes his head, cheek against his folded arms as he chews, and Hannibal draws a deep breath.

“I didn’t either until today,” he says, rolling onto his stomach and folding his arms as Will has his, elbows near together. “A baby sister. Her name is Mischa. It sounded terrible,” he admits. “A great deal of screaming and wailing, and then I heard her cry, a very small, high sound. Piercing,” he frowns, and then shakes his head. “I saw her only briefly. She is very tiny, little hands and feet. Very pink.”

Hannibal slips a foot over to press it against Will’s tail, sliding absently against it.

“It’s a very important thing for our family, so the castle is very busy today. I doubt anyone has noticed that I’ve left.”

Will blinks, shifts his tail just enough for Hannibal to slip his feet beneath if he so wishes, regards him through his messy fringe.

"Are you happy you have a sister?" he asks, genuinely curious, and Hannibal frowns in thought.

"I'm not unhappy. I don’t know why they wanted another child, my tutors complain I am more than enough for them."

Will laughs, warm and pleased, eyes narrowed.

"Think of it this way," Will considers. “She brings sweet gifts with her now, as she grows she will bring more."

“So you hope,” Hannibal grins in return, and it settles into an easy smile. There is a sense to his words - there usually is, Hannibal has found - and he rests a foot beneath his tail to curl his toes against the cool scales. He’s surprised at how heavy it is, and buries his cheek deeper against his arms.

“Perhaps when she is not so loud and small, I can bring her to meet you,” he adds. “You can teach her to swim as well.” He pauses and glances towards the sun, still high enough above the horizon. “Shall we go again? I could come with you to find a shell today, if you’ll guide me.” Hannibal grins, “And I’ll leave the rest of the almonds here with you.”

Will grins, delighted with the promise of treats, with the promise of guiding Hannibal to the clean white sand to seek out shells. Hannibal holds his breath for long enough to impress Will, he thinks once he learns to swim he will be a formidable partner for swimming and racing together.

"Come on," he says, pushes himself to slip back to the water, shaking his hair free from his face with a laugh.

"Hold your breath. Use your hands and sink with me."

And with that he winks and submerges himself without another word.

Hannibal takes another almond before pushing his fingers through the sand and standing to follow. He squints a little at the ease with which Will moves, but supposes it only fair, really. Will on land is hardly more graceful than Hannibal beneath the water, but each makes do with what they have.

He restrains a shiver and wades into the sea again, kicking this time to reach Will faster, following him out to the edge of the cove.

“Very clever,” he murmurs, chin just above the water and feet keeping steady time beneath him.

Will grins and his eyes widen. “Ready?”

“You won’t let me drown,” Hannibal asks, as he has countless times before, met by the same easy laugh.

“If I wanted you to drown it would be much easier than this,” snorts Will, laughing still as he turns towards the water, and with a single firm flick of his tail, becomes but a dark, sleek shadow beneath the surface.

Hannibal pushes his hair back from his face, though he knows the lank blonde strands will find their way back soon enough, and draws a deep breath. Quick hands, strengthening shoulders still narrow with youth, part the water beneath him and he kicks himself around to point headfirst instead. It is rather graceless, feet splashing above the surface, and it takes him two tries, but on the third, and after a single swear, he dips down beneath.

Blinking blurry through the water, he catches the glint of bright scales, the glow of pale skin, and reaches for him.

Hands clasp, palm to palm, and Will pulls Hannibal deeper, down through the crystal clear water to the bottom, the white sand. The shells they usually dig up, fingers gentle to dislodge the sand from them before bringing them up and free to take away.

Beneath them, the shells are green and aqua, further buried than usual, washed up new from the deeper water.

Their hands remain warm together, holding tight, and Will guides Hannibal before him, turning to press his hand against the sand, shifting with a strong kick of his tail to float above Hannibal, to hold him gently down with the weight above him.

They linger only long enough to gather the shells they can carry, sorting them on shore later. Then Hannibal turns to Will, smiling wide, and presses the shells to his chest before kicking from the sea floor and up, up to the sun they can see trembling above the water.

He breaks the water first, flicks his head to get his hair from his eyes and kicks, fast and powerful, now, with practice, towards the shore. Behind himself he hears Will break the water also, beat the surface with his tail before he hears nothing at all. Hannibal grins, bubbles pooling at the corners of his mouth as he kicks harder, works his arms to propel himself through the water faster.

It's just a feeling, barely warmth, barely heat, but Hannibal dives, slings his arms around Will’s shoulders and holds on, feels another powerful kick of the tail, a strong twist within Hannibal's arms and Will breaks free, speeds ahead, and this time breaks the water first.

He hears Will laugh from above the water, or from below - it’s hard to tell, when in an instant Hannibal is disoriented by the swirl of water around him, the bubbles that blow towards him and rise blinding to the surface. Surging into the current from Will’s tail, Hannibal beats the water with strong legs and throws a hand out, nearly catching Will by the fin before it jerks free, and this time Will’s laugh does ring from beneath the water, echoing ethereal and strange.

Now Hannibal surfaces, the trail lost and his friend spun into the shadows beneath the waves. He shoves his hair back from his face with both hands, chest heaving, and closes his eyes towards the night sky with a sigh.

A grin parts his lips without even needing to open his eyes, as he feels warm hands press against his stomach, his back, his chest, followed by the sleek glide of a tail twining around his legs, fin spiralling softly over his feet as Will surrounds him.

“I should have pulled you back down again,” he laughs, and Hannibal watches rueful as Will curves away from him, arms listing lazily across the surface.

“My lungs do not work the same as yours,” Hannibal reminds him, still a bit breathless despite being a far more powerful swimmer than nearly anyone else.

Anyone else besides Will, of course.

He adds, “If you wished to drag me off into the sea and devour me, you might have done it eight years ago and saved us both the time.”

"Had you not returned the shell, I might have," Will responds, grinning, pressing just a little closer before unwinding from around Hannibal and floating beside him. It's a warm night, the sky filled with stars and the barest line of the moon. Will draws a warm palm against Hannibal's back as the young man moves to float beside him, quietly letting the waves carry them both.

"You're getting better," he murmurs, turning his head to grin at Hannibal. “Any day now you will beat me to shore."

So long now they have swum together, catching hands and spinning in the water, laughing and talking of everything and nothing at all. Will had helped Hannibal build a boat, a small wooden thing, to help carry his things - sometimes him, if their journey was long - when they swam to the little islands Will knew of and no one else had seen. 

Hannibal had brought him food of every delicious variety, made by his hand, as the years progressed. More and more elaborate, and always delicious.

"Must you go?" he asks.

The question forces Hannibal to suppress a look of displeasure as it twists inside of him. There is no sound but the movement of the wave against the shore for a long time, until finally he turns counter to how Will circles him.

“I must,” Hannibal answers, slowly spinning to meet Will’s wide blue eyes again and again, and swallowing down the pressure he feels in those words, pressing outward. “It’s what they wish for me.”

“But what do you wish?”

Perplexed, Hannibal blinks, for a moment unsure of what to say before he steels his jaw again, and brings his tone lighter. “I wish to become a doctor,” he answers, in truth. “An alchemist. To learn new skills unfathomed by those around me.”

A pause, and a slight smile appears as he slows his spinning, a little dizzy.

“I have rather an enjoyment of rare things,” he adds.

Will grins, slips to circle Hannibal once more and finds his hand snared. When he presses close this time, winding his tail around Hannibal’s legs once more, they press from hips to chest and Will’s lips are parted in surprise. He turns his hand gently in Hannibal’s grip and turns to press them palm to palm again.

"What will you do?" Hannibal asks, and Will allows a smile. 

"What have I done in the time you've been away?" he asks. "I shall live and wait until you come and see me again."

"Would you come with me?"

Will laughs, but the sound is not wholly pleased.

"I cannot swim on land, Hannibal," he says softly. "You go to study in a place that sees no rivers and no seas."

“The mountains,” Hannibal responds direly. His jaw works for a moment, watching their fingers interlaced, shining silvery in the thin moonlight, and he slips his hand into Will’s other hand as well. Warm palms and warmer bodies pressed close, but for the slippery sensation of Will’s tail curled around him.

Hannibal presses his forehead to Will’s, joined near enough there he can smell the salt sweet like sea-spray on Will’s breath, feel their noses touch. “That is what I would wish for,” he decides. “That if I must go, you could come with me.”

His eyes open wider, dark as the shell that hangs on a longer lanyard now around his neck, and he watches the boundless blue ocean of Will’s eyes so close to his own.

“I will come back,” he insists. “And it isn’t forever, it’s only for a time.”

In his ardency, a dusky rose colors Hannibal’s cheeks when he realizes how closely entwined they are. It matters not - Will is his dearest friend, his only friend besides his sister - and it matters a great deal in every other way. Hannibal forces himself to breathe, and not draw away as he would have on any other night before.

"A time," Will agrees, eyes just as surely on Hannibal's, cheeks barely flushed from their proximity. He swallows, finally, closes his eyes and lifts his chin, his lips catching Hannibal's in a gentle kiss.

It's short, breathless, and Will tilts his head to bring their lips together again, deeper, hotter, letting go of one of Hannibal's hands to press it to his face.

They are close enough in the shallows that Hannibal can stand, Will wrapped around him, and he presses closer now even still, stealing his breath, his voice, keeping his eyes resolutely closed to everything but the sensation, the softness, the touch between them.

"I will wait," he breathes, when they break. "I will wait and you will come back to me."

“Yes.”

Hannibal works a hand through Will’s hair, curls his fingers against the back of his neck to keep him close. He feels the soft shoreline sand beneath his feet and steps just enough off of his toes that he can stand, still up to his shoulders in the gentle rise and fall of water around them. An arm wraps around Will’s middle, then, fingers spread against the soft place beneath Will’s ribs where his skin becomes scales, holding his friend easily against him in the waves, larger and stronger than he ever was before.

“I will come back to _you_ ,” Hannibal swears again to Will that watches him now, shining quicksilver bright in the moonlight. “Work through my studies and return to this beach and call to you, Will, and you will come.”

He sighs aching into another kiss, clumsy and soft, deepening with desire rather than experience. Hoisting Will higher against him, arm sliding beneath his tail instead to hold the weight of him, Hannibal lifts him as though to take him from the water but stumbles through the soft sand and topples slowly back into the water, settling against the sand, the waves lapping across his chest where Will’s fingers now gather in the first soft twists of hair appearing there.

“I will learn many new things,” insists Hannibal. “How to breathe underwater, perhaps. How to bring you on to land with me.”

Will’s lips, parted and lovely, silence him without a word, and firm arms squeezing tight, Hannibal takes another soft kiss from him, to simply feel his mouth glide against that of another. Of Will, his Will, that after so long finally sits across his lap, and allows Hannibal to kiss his neck, his collarbone, reverent and slow.

It's a consummation of patience, of softness. Play fights and learning, discovering each other as the creatures they both are, foreign to each other, new, exciting, and as the men they are beneath that, their souls, their thoughts and understanding of the world around them.

Will smiles, makes a soft sound and ducks his head to watch Hannibal beneath him, hair longer, now, and damp against his forehead, stuck to the skin there for Will to gently sweep aside.

How many things they have discussed, how many things they have attempted; trying to get Hannibal to breathe as Will does, trying to educate Will’s tail to shift as legs would do, to simulate walking. All long hours and days wiled away together in the shallows, then races to the depths, for beautiful shells and coral and pearls.

They have grown strong together, watched each other falter and flail, listened to each other's woes - Hannibal’s tedious lessons when he would rather be swimming with Will, Will’s need and desire for secrecy when Hannibal is not there.

Around them, the waves roll in slow and gentle, warmed still from the day's sun, calm now as it settles into sleep, no moon to roughen it. Will kisses Hannibal again, sighs against him.

"Trust me."

He feels his answer, does not need to hear it, and with another breath kisses Hannibal once more and settles them both under water in the shallows, sharing breath and life between them, staying still there and Will exhales through his nose, draws in more oxygen from the water and feeds it to Hannibal. An imperfect loop but it sends them from the water laughing, soft.

"It appears," sputters Hannibal, a rich laugh caught beneath his hand as he pushes up from the sand again, "that breathing beneath the water has been learnt already."

Hannibal stretches his fingers, hands, arms through the warm shifting waters and wraps his arms around Will's waist, bringing them together, chest to chest, to feel the other's heart beat against their own. Curling the backs of his fingers to stroke gently down Will's cheek, Hannibal kisses him, and then again, and then again.

He will ask himself a thousand times or more why they waited so long for this, when their hearts raced and their bodies warmed and their mouths explored in slow progress as they did with their entire beings, year after year.

But for now, satisfied that Will is here, and Will shall remain here, Hannibal throws a grin back towards Will and stands, still young but so much taller, stronger, faster, braver now - the man in him more visible than the boy.

"So then all that's left to resolve is taking you to land with me," he considers, and catches Will beneath his arms before he can race back to the sea, laughing.

"Hannibal," Will warns, a strong sweep of his tail - twice as long as the rest of him - nearly knocking Hannibal's legs out beneath him, narrowly dodged. "Hannibal, no."

"Will, yes," he answers, grinning. “Trust me.”

With a quiet hum of focus, he lifts Will from the water and fills with warmth to hear his laughter ringing brightly against his ear, arms around his broadened shoulders. Hannibal scoops an arm beneath Will's heavy tail, bending soft over his elbow, and with tail tip dragging across the sand, Hannibal carries him from the sea.

"You know I can get to land myself," Will mumbles, chagrined. "I was on land when you first stole from me."

"Stole?" laughs Hannibal, shifting Will higher against him, secure in his arms. “I returned it to you.”

"Fair. You only tried to steal it," Will grins, blinking at the sand beneath him as Hannibal takes him further and further from the sea. Towards the tall grasses, towards the woods. Towards the path that winds to the castle up the way.

“I will take you only to the edge of the forest,” Hannibal tells him, and the reluctance - the annoyance, that this is the length of it - is thick in his voice. “So that you can look up through the leaves to see the stars, surrounded by the trees.”

He reaches the edge of the beach, where he can see the scattered path overgrown in time, and makes his way slowly through the sand.

"If you wished to go, I would find a way,” insists Hannibal, holding Will tighter against him and resting his cheek against his damp, dark curls of hair. He watches, oddly solemn as Will extends his fingers through the grasses.

He has never been out this far, the expanse of sand he would have had to crawl through would not be impossible but never much worth the effort in Will’s mind, so he had never tried. Now he runs his fingers through the grasses he had seen so many times for so many years and finds them sharp to the touch, not as smooth as the sea.

Will smiles, splays his fingers through it and lets the sharp little points kiss his fingers like a stinging anemone would. It is beautiful here, an entirely foreign world. He closes his eyes and nuzzles closer to Hannibal, lets the hissing and beating sound he is so used to lull him into comfort. 

He can hear the forest from the sea, a wild and crashing thing of changing moods and nuances, but this is different somehow, he can feel it in his bones here, he does not just hear it with his ears and he realizes, in a moment that sends his heart pounding, that he can hear the _sea!_ That he hears the sea as Hannibal does, from the outside, and it sounds like the most beautiful thing in the world.

"Look up," Hannibal whispers, chasing his request with a soft kiss to Will’s temple, his cheek, the corner of his eye, and so Will does.

The sky does not waver here, it is stoic as when Will regards it from land. But the sound around it, the deep breathing of the sea, the soft murmuring of the forest, Hannibal’s heart beating against his own, is almost overwhelming. For a moment it does swim. Then Will ducks his head to kiss Hannibal once more, a deep, warm, almost desperate thing.

Hannibal resists the urge to lay back against the tree beside them, to snare Will fully into his arms, against his chest, and kiss him until the sun rises. He would not lower him to the soft forest soil, it would be out of place, strange, unwelcome to see him there like that, but in Hannibal’s arms he seems as home as in the sea, suspended wondrous and lovely, curls of hair drying against his cheek, his neck, each kissed in turn down to Will’s shoulders as the other boy wraps his arms tighter around Hannibal’s shoulders, sighs breathless in the new sensation of being kissed and held this way.

New for both of them, new and lovely as when Hannibal first found himself floating in the ocean, weightless and infinite. The trees shudder above them, a sound much like the sea itself, gusts of wind through their high branches that shift them like crashing waves against the shore of sky star-bright above.

“I will,” Hannibal swears as they part enough to breathe, his lungs have never been as strong as Will’s, and he is flushed from trying to keep himself submerged in the boundless depths of his friend’s kisses. “I will find you again. I will not forget you, Will.”

He swallows hard, eyes closed in the darkness that surrounds them like the depths of ocean that Will knows well and that Hannibal can only just imagine.

“Will you forget me?”

Will smiles, holds Hannibal’s face in his hands and rests their foreheads together. He thinks of all the years they have talked and played and discovered, of all the times Hannibal had asked him if he were lying when something he said was too unbelievable to understand, thinks of how he had always answered him,

"I can't."

And now it seals something between then, a promise both can feel against their skin and deeper still, to their hearts that beat in time.

A while longer they linger, Hannibal pointing out the trees around them, explaining what they do, how they can be useful medicinally, ecologically, and Will listens, wraps his tail - heavy, here, useless - cold around Hannibal’s legs and turns his eyes where Hannibal directs them. It's comfortable, warm, and he wonders why they had waited so long to do this, too, together.

Then they return, Hannibal’s arms tired from holding his friend, his heart tired of thinking of his trip the next morning, and they float in the shallows of their cove, this time Will supporting Hannibal against him, stroking strong fingers through his hair as he tells him of the stars and the myths behind them.

"I will miss the sound of the sea," Hannibal admits, quiet, eyes closed and head back against Will’s chest as they float. “It is as familiar now as the heartbeat of a friend."

Will considers, tail shifting lazily in the water to keep them both buoyant, then reaches back to undo the strap holding his shell against his throat, settles it alongside Hannibal’s where it rests on his chest.

"You can return it when you get back,” he tells him.

Hannibal tilts his head backwards, hair fanned silvery against the surface of the water, and watches Will as he ties the shell around his neck. He settles it with a careful hand, joined by the other, and presses them slowly down Hannibal’s chest as he leans down to kiss him.

Weightless here, between the infinite darkness of the water and the sky, with nothing else but Will, wrapped around him, Hannibal feels his heart so heavy it’s a wonder it doesn’t weigh him to the depths.

Hannibal turns, breaking the kiss only with a grin as their noses brush, and slips his leg around Will’s hip. His tail works a little harder to balance them both, and careful fingers slip loose the warm brown shell that Hannibal has worn without exception since it was given to him, when they were both so small.

“Keep mine, then,” he tells Will, reaching to slip it around his neck, a bittersweet pleasure in watching Will reach up to touch it, resting against his pale chest. “So you can hear the trees in it, and think of me.”

“And then you’ll return,” Will says.

“Always.”

They kiss, again and again, they kiss and they press and they promise, as though one were somehow insufficient, though both their hearts sing with insistence, as though more soft words between them will carry them further, sustain them in their distance. From the sea to the sand, sand to the trees, from the trees to the castle and onward still.

Hannibal reaches down to the shell and clutches it, holding it tight in his fist the entire walk home.


	2. Chapter 2

Will doesn’t know how he knows. Something awakens perhaps, or twists, but when it happens, and when he surfaces on the shore, the little girl is always there.

Light curling hair done up in elaborate knots and swirls at the front, falling long and free down her back. She has a minder, a small quiet man who she seems to respond to well, respect and heed.

She looks like her brother.

Every time she comes to the beach, Will watches her explore the sand. Crouch to dig away at it with little hands, mindless of sand getting into her hair or on her pretty clothes.

She rarely finds anything. Her morning walks last a few hours before she is herded back to the castle for lessons or a nap. But, Will notes, she always looks to the sea before she goes, seeking something out, and always waves, even when there is no one to see.

He watches her for weeks, seeing her play and jump, race the waves and shriek in joy when they catch her. More and more she runs farther from her keeper, Will watches, fascinated, as she conditions him to know she will always come back if given time to. 

She is allowed to venture further. Will watches her with a smile, hidden.

It is a few weeks after that, that he brings her a shell. Tiny and curved, drawn long like a trumpet, and the lightest pink. He watches her discover it, hold it up to the sun to look, before scampering to the water to wash it clean of sand. Then she stands, for long silent minutes, just watching the water, before she laughs and holds the shell to her chest.

"Thank you, Will!"

He blinks, wide-eyed surprise to hear his name sung out, and remembers how many years ago a little boy would race down to the waterline and lift his chin and call to him in just the same way. A little more demanding, perhaps, but really just the same.

Will misses him, intensely, and for a moment simply watches the little girl before the taste of sugared almonds dances across his tongue. He slides closer, to sit against the little drop where the sand becomes deeper, and plants his hands into the soft, thick sand.

“What’s your name?” he calls back, careful to check over his shoulder and ensure that her minder is still in the distance, reading contentedly.

She is just as surprised as he, to find herself spoken to by the sea, but keeps her distance, and the shell held against her chest.

“Mischa,” she chimes, and Will’s heart skips a little.

“Mischa Lecter,” he says, grinning despite himself.

“Yes,” she says, still standing her ground even as a wave rolls over her bare feet. “How do you know that?”

Will’s brows lift, disappearing beneath long lank curls of hair, his tail still hidden where he sits against the shore. “How do you know me?” he answers.

She turns back to check as he had, but the man supervising her pays neither of them mind. Then she takes a step closer, far enough to keep a safe distance but to better see, to better hear him and talk in turn.

"Hannibal told me once that he had a friend in the sea," she says, "with beautiful eyes and curling hair.” She grins. "And a tail like a fish! Powerful and long and all his own. He told me never to tell and I never did."

Will considers, feeling himself smile and blink rapidly before nuzzling his hands where they now lay crossed on the sand.

"When you were born there was a great celebration in the castle," Will tells her. “Many people were there to see you, and pay their respects to the little countess."

Mischa bounces on the balls of her feet, seems to preen at the thought, before chewing her lip and narrowing her eyes.

"How do I know it's you? Perhaps you're a bandit out to kidnap me for ransom."

Will laughs, remembers similar caution from her brother, so many years ago. He narrows his eyes back and tilts his head, keeps their eyes together, before slowly, deliberately, lifting his tail to flick against the sand, sweeping it back to the water and sending a sheet of it flying in its wake.

"I would not lie to you, little countess,” he says, delighting in her wide eyes and joyful smile.

She laughs and bounds closer, shell clutched in little fingers, and stares at Will, bright and eager. “You are Will!”

“I am,” he agrees.

“Show me again!”

“Now,” Will cautions her, tongue darting past his lips before he lowers his voice, and she leans nearer to hear him, listening with all the attention she can muster. “Hannibal told you, that you shouldn’t tell anyone?”

“Yes,” she nods, “and I never have, ever.”

“Not even if I show you again?”

“No, not ever.”

“Not even if you’re very excited?”

“Never,” she laughs. “Show me, please, Will?”

Will smiles softly, and feels a peculiar catch in his chest, a sudden affection for the little countess, beloved by her brother who spoke of her so very often. He sweeps his tail slowly through the water again, and with a turn, brings it as near to her as he can. She touches without hesitation, little fingers poking several scales, before she presses her palm against him.

“Like a big fish,” she breathes, eyes enormous, and Will laughs before slipping his lower half beneath the water again, arms folded beneath him.

“How is your brother, Mischa? Does he write to you?” he finally asks. It hasn’t been long since he departed, Will imagines, hardly any time at all in the whole history of everything, but he must remind himself to breathe as he watches her, his only contact with his friend.

She watches Will with huge eyes, dark as Hannibal’s, youthful and excited. Then she blinks, seems to realize he asked her a question and nods quickly.

"He wrote last week. He says alchemy is like magic. That he studies every day."

Will swallows, nods, smiles.

"Is he happy?" He asks, and Mischa nods vigorously, bouncing on the balls of her feet. Will finds himself smiling more genuinely.

"I miss him so much too," she confides, playing with her little shell, "he told me stories every day. Told me about you and the magical things he saw under the sea."

Will grins.

"Did he tell you of the races?" he asks.

"He said you're very fast," she grins, cheeks flushed bright in enthusiasm and the cool wind that rushes in over the sea.

Will's smile widens, hidden briefly into his tucked arms, and then props his cheek on his hand, watching her, imagining how much Hannibal would like to be here to see her. To see him. To see them both, like this.

"He's very fast, too," Will tells her. "He's faster than me sometimes."

"No!"

"Yes," he nods. "Two legs are like two tails, you can swim twice as fast."

She crouches and studies the shell in her hands, turning it over and over again to watch the light play bright off the iridescent pinks and purples across it. "He said that you would bring him presents, from underneath the water. But he said," she pauses and huffs a little, squinting in thought. "He said that the best present of all was left in the sea."

Will blinks, and tries to recall the things they brought back together. The shells and the corals, the bits of sea glass polished bright over years in the sifting sands, the urchin shells and pearls, pried from inside oysters as they laughed trying to work them open.

"Yes," she decides, eyes widening. "He said that the best one was still there, and would be waiting for him when he came back. What is it?"

Will finds himself grinning, nearly laughing in pleasure and pressing his hand to his eyes. He misses him. His smiles and his hands, his soft words and curiosity.

He misses his lips.

"Something I said I would keep for him." Will lifts the brown shell to show her, one he is certain she has seen before. "And stories I promised to tell."

And me.

He thinks his face will split from smiling.

"Will you write to him soon?"

She scoots closer in little steps across the sand, still crouched, to look at the shell from nearer, and nods, curls bouncing.

"Yes, we've been practicing my letters and so I write to him often."

Will bites his lip, thoughtful, and rests his cheek on his arms to watch her for a moment more. "Will you write to him for me?"

"I'm not very good at writing," she frowns, childish consternation.

"Much better than I am, little countess," Will assures her. "I don't even have anything to write on but the sand, and the waves just wash it away."

A little head shake, and a little laugh. "That's not going to work at all," she declares. "How will he read it when he's so far away? You have to send it to him!"

"So will you write to him for me, then, since the sea steals my letters?"

"Yes," she answers, squinting out over the treacherous ocean. "What shall I say to him?"

"Tell him," Will begins, and then smiles. "Tell him that his present is still here in the sea, waiting for him to return."

-=-

Weeks pass and every seventh day, Mischa goes to the beach and calls for Will and he comes.

Speaking with Mischa is nothing like what his conversations had been with Hannibal. She is curious and little, demanding in her attention and affectionate in return. Will exhausts himself keeping her entertained but finds he goes to sleep contented every time he does.

Weeks become months and Mischa visits less. She apologizes, explains how as a lady - and a countess - more lessons are required for her to attend on the weekends. Etiquette and poise, understanding of politics and more languages.

She comes when she can, and always Will is waiting for her.

Months become a year.

One year becomes three.

Mischa comes rarely but stays as long as she can. Explaining what is happening in the castle as best as he can understand, giving news of Hannibal's schooling and his successes.

"He is working with the alchemists," she tells Will, excited, hair longer now and braided to the side. “He says they will find the answer to eternal life together!"

It's overwhelming and unbelievable, and Will is rapt listening to her, offering his opinion, happy to hear hers.

But she looks greyer, more tired. More than she should for an eight-year-old, more than she should at all for many, many long years of life. But he says nothing on the matter. And she never says anything when she hugs Will goodbye when they part.

It is the last time he sees the little countess, though he waits on the seventh day of every week, through weeks marked by the filling and emptying of the moon. He waits for her and leaves shells on the shore and they are always there when he returns again.

The weather grows chilly, the sea choppy at times, splashing against the shore and sending spray glistening up into the sun that does little to warm the beach down past the tall grasses, from the path that leads into the woods, and up to the castle on the hill. Perhaps, Will thinks, this is why she doesn’t come - it is warm in the water but cold outside of it, and soon it will snow, and he can’t imagine they would let the little countess near the rough waters.

But another figure waits for him, on the seventh day after many weeks, clad in black. The figure looks out over the water as though searching, and finally crouches to remove his shoes and set them far back from the water where the sea cannot take them.

He returns, and dips his feet into the water to wait, and finally calls out.

“Will?”

The voice is so familiar, but lower, now, deeper, heavy with conviction and authority and yet Will still knows it so well. Knows every rise and fall within it, knows every turn of tone.

He surfaces quickly, far enough out to plunge back in should his ears have betrayed him and he shows his face to another, but close enough to see, to be seen.

Hannibal is taller, leaner, grown to adulthood as the powerful and beautiful man Will has always known he would be, grown to be the leader that his father and subjects expect. And returned having learned what he had wanted. A doctor, an alchemist, capable of bringing eternal life and healing to anyone who sought it.

Will’s heart swells, his smile widens, and he swims closer, rides one of the waves right to the shore to settle on the sand and reach out for his friend.

“You’re returning my shell,” he tells him, breathless and smiling.

Hannibal takes him in, the way that Will has grown in his absence, broader shoulders and capable arms, a tail long and powerful enough to jettison him with speed that Hannibal can only imagine. But his eyes, the same brilliant blue that he has seen in his mind a thousand times, the crooked grin and dusky flush across his cheeks.

Without a mind for anything else, he ducks to scoop Will up beneath his arms, his own strength grown as well in their time apart, and holds him in an embrace eased by Will’s arms slinging around his neck.

“Yes,” Hannibal breathes, and it’s all he can say as he presses their foreheads together. As though no time at all has passed, since Will found him there so long ago.

As though lifetimes have passed, and drawn lines down Hannibal’s face even in their few years apart.

He squeezes Will closer against him, to hide the trembling in his arms.

“I missed you,” he murmurs, eyes closed and lips parted, breathless, to hold his friend’s weight against him, tail skimming in the surf.

Will kisses him, silences anything else for the moment but their shared heartbeat, their touch, so close and missed now finally together. He has missed him too. Ached. Longed for him to come back, for them to speak again, for them to touch and kiss and just feel the other near.

Hannibal seems to pay little heed to how wet his clothes are getting, even with the wind growing vicious around them in gusts before it settles. Will wraps his arms around him and holds him close, hands in his hair and over his shoulders, gentle and warm and tight all at once.

“I missed you,” he tells him in return, nuzzling against him, nose to nose, feeling the warmth of Hannibal’s breath against his skin before he feels his lips again as well and smiles.

Already numb to the cold, Hannibal sits back in the wet sand, where the water pools warmly around him, soaking through his clothes. He parts his legs around Will’s tail, knees drawn up against him, and brings Will against his chest, his embrace unyielding, and kisses his friend until he can’t breathe anymore.

Will’s lungs were always much stronger than his own.

Shuddering not from the chill wind or water, as Will strokes his hair back from his face, Hannibal lets himself fall into the curious blue eyes that watch him just as intensely in return. Another kiss, another. Soft and simple, just to feel the other’s lips against their own, their breath, their heat.

“You met Mischa,” Hannibal finally says, eyes darting down every curve and angle of Will’s face to study him again, to remember, to memorize.

“The little countess,” Will responds, twisting his finger through Hannibal’s lengthened hair, and nuzzling against his cheek again to press even closer.

“She wrote to me about you.” A soft smile, faint. “Drew pictures of you for me. I sent her letters just for you in return, god knows if they made it to you.”

Will grins, nods. They had.

“The water is unkind to paper,” he apologises, “but I read every single one, remember them. Thank you.” He smiles back, moves enough to have Hannibal lay back, so he does not have to support them both half-sitting, uncomfortable himself so he doesn’t bend Will’s tail badly.

“I wrote you words in the sand that the water took away. Beaches and beaches of words. I wish I had found a similar messenger but some of the words were not for her to see.” He laughs, warm, and turns to rest his elbow on the sand, look down at his friend. Cleanshaven and taller, and much more tired.

He draws a hand down the front of his ruined shirt, brows furrowed in apology.

“You managed to escape to come alone?” he jokes. “She had threatened to follow you everywhere when you came home.”

Hannibal has no mind for the sand, for the surf, for the ruined clothes or for anything now but Will, whose words draw the lines deeper in his face. He turns onto his side, pressed body to body with Will, to touch his face and neck, his shoulder and his chest, down onto his side to where his skin scales down into his tail.

"She cannot," he says simply, and the words snare in his throat. Hannibal pulls closer still, to tuck his head against Will's chest, eyes closed and hand pressed to feel the beat of Will's heart beneath it.

Will pushes a hand back through Hannibal's hair to smooth it damp from his face, and leaves his fingers twined there. "She told me of her lessons, that she has to become a lady now."

Hannibal swallows hard.

"She cannot."

Words linger unspoken, murky, and Hannibal speaks again before Will can ask.

"Tell me what your letters said. I am here now, to hear them."

“You are here,” Will agrees, smiling, pleased, and ducks his head to press warm kisses into his hair, stroking it softly as Hannibal’s arms wind around Will and hold him so tightly it almost hurts.

“I wrote to you of the ocean.” he tells him gently. “Of the fish we’ve seen, the new ones that I could not wait to show you. We had a storm, so wild and uncontrollable that the sea and the trees screamed together, and then they quieted, talked together for many days after in hushed whispers and shivers of their leaves.”

“The coral has grown, the one we discovered off the reef on the third island. It’s bright as the tarts you once brought, red and beautiful and filled with fish. When the sea calms I will take you, show you. We will go together, you’ll see.”

He holds the man against him as he says nothing, as he clings to him and breathes, and Will’s brows furrow.

“Hannibal, please tell me what’s hurting you.”

Hannibal sets his jaw, and does not open his eyes, knowing how dark they will appear, how pronounced the rings beneath them. He keeps his forehead pressed to Will's skin, and tries to imagine the fish, the coral, the sea, boundless and infinite around them.

"I was not meant to be home yet," he begins. "Several years more of studying, at least. Apprenticeship beyond that, perhaps here if I could find one, elsewhere if I could not find someone near to teach me."

The ocean and the trees move in waves, whispering soft.

"She became ill. I might have come home then to treat her, even with a journey of several weeks, I might have been able to - " The words stop, no flow to them, now, frozen and unmoving. "They insisted I stay, and by the time they knew, there was nothing to be done, they said."

Hannibal's hands splay against Will's back, and he hides his face against him.

"They said I could have done nothing for her, that more skilled doctors had tried, but that no alchemist can overcome death itself."

He chokes down a breath, sighing roughly where his lips brush over Will's heart.

"They are wrong," Hannibal insists, and the words wash dark from his lips.

Will stills, eyes wide and lips parted. Panic, horror through his heart at the thought that he had gotten her ill, that she had come to the sea so often and always so bare… perhaps if he had told her to stay home, perhaps if she had heeded him -

“I’m sorry,” he breathes, pulls back enough to look at Hannibal, curled as he is, to stroke his hair and coax him up to look. He doesn’t smile, does nothing but keep his hand moving, his eyes on the man he loves and treasures, has missed and holds in his heart.

And he can see the toll the death has taken on Hannibal, the way he has not slept, how he has allowed his body to grow weaker from lack of food. He wishes he could help, that he could say something, do something beyond offer comfort that feels almost empty in the weight of what Hannibal has told him.

“Can you?” he asks softly. “Overcome death?”

For an instant, Hannibal imagines he can taste sugared almonds in his teeth, the sweetness of strawberry tart against his tongue, and he lifts a hand to rest against Will's fingers and keep them close against his cheek.

"We avoid it," he says softly, the bare waver in his voice holding his emotions at bay, damming them back to stop them from drowning him. "We learn to treat illness, to extend life, to change its form, stronger, weaker."

A sigh, against Will's lips, eyes closed against the shocked stare.

"We are not taught to bypass it. It exists, it is, as much as life, but," he hesitates, fingers tightening over Will's. "But there are ways. Books and methods, illicit. It is much more difficult than to work within the constraints of life, a different realm entirely, but in theory - we are taught - they are two halves of the same whole."

Like brother and sister.

Like the shore that defines the ocean.

Like they themselves, cleaving close in spite of all their distances.

"Essences make us, define us," Hannibal explains softly. "I have read, the books I shouldn't have read. I have learned, the things I should not have learned. We are not taught it because to replace one essence requires another and -"

His words falter, so certain and sure one moment, and nearly quaking the next.

"To take a life from another is against everything we do."

Will watches him, holds Hannibal against the tremors that shake him nearly apart, he listens. He knows of magic, he knows the depths it can take one and how much they can take from someone if they fall so deep as Hannibal is willing. And he knows Hannibal is. Against his nature to protect, his nature to lead and heal, he is willing.

It frightens him.

Will says nothing on the matter.

Instead he swallows, hushes Hannibal softly, wraps around him as much as he can and breathes gently until Hannibal’s own shuddered breaths can match his, until he is calm.

“What do you need?” he asks at length. “Whatever you need, I will help you get it.”

Hannibal tucks himself in close against Will, head beneath his chin and arms around his waist. He watches as Will coils his tail around Hannibal’s legs, muscles undulating beneath his glistening scales, and lowers his hand to trace curve of it, wrapped over him.

“A great many things,” Hannibal answers softly. “Someplace quiet, far from where I might be interrupted. My tools. Parts of the forest and the sea, of the castle where she lived. Elements of her life,” he breathes, and the words draw his body tight for an instant before he forces it to loosen, forces himself against Will to lay nearly atop him, curling a hand up through his hair.

Comfort in this, at least, in the assurance that no matter how far removed Hannibal feels from this world rendered in faded greys, this place where the woods come down to the ocean, that Will is here with him.

“A sacrifice,” he breathes, giving no more volume to the words than that, knowing what listens from the shadows but remains unseen. “Myself, for her,” Hannibal insists.

Will blinks at him, keeps his expression as neutral as his speeding heart allows, before parting his lips with the tip of his tongue.

“I will take you to an island,” he says, “One I haven’t shown you before, one no one else can find. You can put your tools into the boat and paddle past the cove, I will find you and show you where to go from there.”

He swallows, “The forest I cannot help you with, but I will bring you the sea.”

He says nothing of the sacrifice, nothing of his displeasure, of the way his heart curls as though squeezed by a fist, in pain, in agony of waiting only to find that he will lose him forever, now.

Will is no alchemist. He will not bring Hannibal back when he is gone.

“When?” he asks, and his voice betrays his anguish here, his fear. He closes his eyes and turns his head away to just imagine, for a moment, that they can have longer than a day.

"Soon."

The word pulls thick from Hannibal's throat, a fear he doesn't show, a grief he cannot hide. A mourning, endless and dark, to lose her or to lose this, _him_ , who warms him now against the cold.

"The longer I wait," he explains, "the further she goes. The more what remains of her fades to nothing."

He kisses Will, to trap the tremor of his breath against lips that part beneath his own. There is strength in Hannibal's arms that was not there before, that moves Will easily atop him, a darkness to his eyes that Will has never seen, edging out the brown that matches the shell still pressed to Will's chest.

"I had to see you again. I couldn't -" Hannibal's words tighten too much, cut short in his throat until he works them slowly free again. "I couldn't do this without seeing you. To know you're well, that you will be here for her."

Hannibal grasps Will's hand in his own, and brings his fingers to his lips.

"Like you were here for me."

Will watches him in silence, feels the heat of his mouth against his fingers, the warmth of his body against his own. Hannibal shivers but doesn’t leave the water, and Will presses close to warm him, to keep him from catching a chill, from growing ill himself, though he doubts Hannibal much cares.

“Always,” he promises, turning their hands to kiss Hannibal’s fingers in turn, to press his own words there.

Then he seeks Hannibal’s mouth out and lets his eyes close, lets himself fall into the memories of races in the sea and moonless nights where they could float together and see the stars, to the night he had felt Hannibal pull him close and kiss him, after months and months of both of them wanting to, of both of them hoping and needing and aching to.

Just as the wait between them had been.

Aching.

Needing.

Hoping.

And now they’re here. Together. For as long as both can have, and Will will not let him go.

He smiles, presses his hands on either side of Hannibal’s face and kisses him deeper.

Hannibal releases a sound held too long in the snarl of his chest and pushes his hands through Will's hair. Their lips part smoothly against the other, and Hannibal wonders again why they waited so long for this, until the night he had to leave, why he waited so long to return, until the night before he has to depart forever.

A shudder rips itself free at the thought, how much time they might have had together, and he kisses Will fiercer still, breathless, lungs burning unminded until his cheeks grow hot.

He will blame their dampness on the sea, for it is the fault of that force, which lays heavy atop him and tilts his head shyly, just enough for Hannibal to kiss a bare shoulder, down the arm that curls up into Hannibal's hair and then back to Will's cheek that presses to his own.

It is just as damp, and Hannibal surrounds Will in his arms, rubbing circles down his back.

Hannibal tells him of the mountains, that rise so high into the sky that there's less air to breathe, and how even sitting feels as though one has been swimming very far, and very fast. He tells him of his school, drawing it for him the sand so he can know the shape of it. Pulling Will close, he tells him of the stories he read about the mer, the myths - that they are all women, that they call and beckon to drag men to their deaths - and the truths of them.

"That they bring good luck, and save the drowning," Hannibal breathes against Will's hair.

Will smiles, tucks himself closer against Hannibal and listens. Tells him in turn of the changes within the sea, how the cove is now smaller, eaten away by the ocean in its angrier moments, tells him of the creatures within, new fish Will had never seen before from colder parts of the world, come through on currents so strong they feel like a vacuum.

He draws those, too, explains how they work and where they go. He tells Hannibal how once he had caught himself in one and ended up in a place he could not describe, where people had skin dark as the shell around his neck, and eyes bright and curious. He did not stay long there, he found a current going back and took that to get home.

They talk until the sky grows dark with evening and promise of rain to come within it. Will does not ask Hannibal to stay, though he wants nothing more. He knows he must go home, must rest and care for his parents, console the household that he will soon take over.

He knows he must ready for the sacrifice he wishes to make.

So Will just kisses him. All over his face, his neck, his shoulders, whispers promises against him in tones soft and warm, nuzzles under his chin before carefully undoing the fastening on the shell he had worn, had put to his ear to listen to the forest caught within, and settling it around Hannibal’s neck, accepting his own in return.

Hannibal slips the shell beneath his shirt, still warm where it sat against Will's heart in his absence, and Will's warmed by his in turn. They curl beneath each other's arm, side by side in the sand, until the sun flares bright across the horizon, and the sky darkens as though it were a fire extinguished. The stars spill out across the trees, stretching towards the last vibrant remnants of light that slip away from the dark.

They kiss until the tide washes up over them.

They stay until Hannibal is nearly blue from the cold, insisting stubborn as ever that he's fine, just a few minutes more. Another kiss, he asks, and then takes another beyond that, to feel every inch of Will beneath his hands, to see him like this a moment more.

After so long.

Before a time indefinite.

Just a few minutes more.

Just one more kiss.

Until finally Will lets himself laugh, warming Hannibal's face with his hands, and the laugh ebbs as Hannibal draws himself up to sit, soaked through and shaking.

"I told you, if the ocean could catch me, it could claim me."

He pushes a hand against his eyes and laughs behind it, eyes shining as he looks toward Will.

"You caught me, instead," Hannibal tells him, extending a hand down to feel Will's fingers wrap in his own. "I am yours."

Will watches him, smile pale in the light of the moon, lips a dark lilac his are allowed to be and Hannibal’s should not be, though they are.

“I will keep you well,” he promises, soft, careful, and keeps his smile as Hannibal leans in for one more kiss, before pressing a palm to his chest and pushing Hannibal away to stand.

“Go.” he tells him, “Rest. Grow warm and return to me. I have kept the boat in the cove, secure and secret. Take what you need. Go to the sea. Call me and I will come.”

It’s soft, a promise, a guarantee, and then Will pushes himself for one more kiss of his own and slips back to the shallows, disappearing with a flick of his tail into deeper waters and into the night itself.

-=-

The cove is smaller than Hannibal remembers it to be - perhaps from the storms that Will described, perhaps from his own growing larger since the last time he was there. He winds his way down the familiar footpath, bag slung across his shoulder, and clothes that smell of woodfire where he dried them the night before.

He sees the shimmering scales, glittering beneath the cold autumn sun, before he can call to him. Instead, Hannibal crouches near the little boat - just where Will said it would be - and dips his fingers into the chilly water.

A sigh, almost a laugh, as he feels warm lips press against them, surround them in heat instead, and Will holds gently onto Hannibal's wrist, emerging slow from the water.

"I missed you," Hannibal intones softly, immediately, but his voice does not break today as it did before. There is something firmer in it, a decision that accepts the pain that he will feel in sacrificing her to death eternal, the agony he will feel in sacrificing his time with Will, that they might have shared.

He makes himself think of her, and consoles himself that they will protect each other in his absence.

He swallows roughly anyway.

"I'm ready."

“Take the boat out,” Will tells him, expression not quite a smile, not quite strong enough to be one, but he tries. “I will follow. I found what you need but it’s a fair way out, and you will need the island.”

He waits for Hannibal to nod, hoists himself further on the shore to bring their lips together in a shallow, quick kiss, and then slips under again, just a flick of his tail suggesting where he could be.

Hannibal follows, the paddles slow in the water compared to how Will swims, to how Hannibal had once swum with him. Once in a while he feels the gentle tap of something hitting the side of the boat, guiding it further north or east, or he will feel the boat speed up, as though something is beneath it pushing it onward. They swim for what feels like hours, far and far towards an island hidden behind and between those Hannibal has seen before, has explored with Will before. He says nothing, asks less, and for a time allows himself to drift, to think.

It is quiet out here, no other boats, no sounds of mourning from the castle. No trees, this far, no birds that nest in them.

It is an entirely ‘other’ silence, one he isn’t sure he enjoys but one that calms his worry, warms his soul.

And then the boat tilts, just a little, and Will hangs over the edge with his fingertips clinging to the boat, and smiles.

He's beautiful like this, and Hannibal reaches for him, pushing his hair back out of his face and slipping carefully closer along the rickety little boat. He slips to the floor of it, legs stretching beside him, and leans low to bring his fingers beneath Will's chin and kiss him.

The quiet of it all is staggering, little more sound than the wind that rocks them gently and the water lapping at the wooden boards, the breath that leaves Hannibal all at once and the soft noise that Will makes in return.

Grinning between their lips, Hannibal leans further still, rocking the boat to the side to follow Will as he lets his fingers slide free, supported by the steady sweep of his tail beneath him.

Half-above the water, half-beneath, sky and ocean joined between their lips. Laughing against each other's mouths, and for a moment, there is only they, whose worlds should feel so much further apart than they do. No more than that and no less. No school and no currents to pull them apart from each other. No castle on the hill, past the path through the forest, no cove by the beach. No families and no fish.

No sister.

No little countess.

Hannibal's fingers spread against Will's cheek and he pulls back just enough to rest their foreheads together, quieting the fear not for what awaits him, but for knowing that it awaits him without Will.

"Come," he breathes, "help me bring the boat in."

Will nods, slips silent beneath the water and pushes the boat to navigate it towards the island, careful of the rocks he can see and Hannibal can only guess at, slipping to the back of it to push as Hannibal pulls it ashore. Then he allows the waves to take him up to the beach, pulling himself further up with sure hands until he can rest on his elbows, watch his friend.

Hannibal works in silence, setting out instruments and books that Will cannot fathom, but watches with wary, wide eyes. He looks on as Hannibal unfolds a heavy silk cloth within which lies a toy, another where pine needles lay half-dried and pressed together, another yet with chunks of stone from the castle wall.

All but the sea, all but what Will had promised to bring.

“It will take time,” Hannibal tells him as he works to set it up, flattening the sand with a swipe of his hand before drawing complex symbols within a wider shape, like a star. Will does not watch his hands.

“I only have stories to draw from, passing journal entries and word of mouth, the rest will be whatever skill I can bring to this. Myself, for her.”

He bites his lip before turning to look at Will with a soft expression.

“What will the sea give me to use?” he asks, and Will swallows, tilts his head, then reaches up to undo the strap holding the shell around his neck, careful with it, holding it in both hands.

“I can find nothing else the sea will be willing to part with, nothing else that will embody it as you need,” he says, looks up, and Hannibal shifts closer, resting one knee in the damp sand. He swallows, leans to kiss Will again, and Will holds him close, strokes his hair back behind his ear, lingers, and smiles.

“Thank you,” Hannibal says, and Will just nods, holds out his hand for Hannibal to take the shell, clasped between their palms.

And slowly, so slowly, around him the water shifts to white, past his tail and up his torso, to his shoulders and up his neck, and Will looks up again, eyes wide and liquid blue, meets Hannibal’s.

“I love you,” he breathes, and then he closes them and is gone, just seafoam on the wind, in the water where he lay. In Hannibal’s palm against the shell.

The embodiment of the sea, and the power of the love within it.

Hannibal watches, eyes wide and lips still warm where Will pressed himself against them. Searches for him, for the pale hands that held his own, for the sparkling scales beneath the waves. Breathless, hands digging into the sand as he slumps, Hannibal makes a sound he doesn't recognize as his own. 

"Will?"

The rustle of water against the shore.

"Will!"

The wind flowing through his hair.

"I love you, too."

There is nothing, merely the green-white seafoam where Will laid against the sand, and the shell still warm against his palm. Hannibal chokes back a desperate sound, fights off the urge to hurl himself in headlong after, to feel the water wrap around him like arms, and press through his lips to fill him like a kiss.

He doesn't know who will claim him now, when his heart has dispersed into the waves.

It doesn't matter, and the agony pushes him to stand.

His breath crashes unmoored from his chest, undone, and Hannibal staggers dizzy back to the circle he has made. Tears carry salt to the sand and he bends low, shaking as he sets the shell among the shapes he's drawn, and claims it as his own, now that there is no one else to do so. This love, theirs, he hopes, enough to bring her back.

Words fall from his throat, practiced sleepless overnight, cobbled together from ancient rumors and a magician's instincts, and as he presses the point of the athame against his belly, Hannibal wonders if perhaps he too might be turned into foam, to join his friend in the sea forever.

His lips move until they can’t anymore.

The sun burns bright as it sets to night across the circle of sand, darkened thick with blood and water, and the only sound that breaks the steadiness of waves is the wail that tears itself from Hannibal's throat, as he wakens there again, just where he fell, and finds the wound made whole again.

"No."

Panting, breathless.

"No."

Hands outstretched, to grasp the doll and the shell beside it.

"Please, no."

There is no sacrifice that can come from that which has no heart, held fast by the boy who looked at him with big blue eyes and laughed against his skin.

The sea does not answer, and Hannibal pleads until he has no more voice than the ocean itself.

-=-

The sand kicks up as the little boy runs through it, eager and shrieking with laughter as his puppy gives chase. 

The beach is near-empty and light, the water lapping against the shore in slow deliberate sighs, leaving a smooth and dark sheet of sand to receive new footprints as the boy runs and barely leaves them, so great is his joy.

His name is called and stops him, and he topples when his dog impacts against his knees and sends them both laughing into the surf.

“Stay clear of the path!” his father yells, beckoning him back, and the boy goes, crawling by his dog, pretending to be his brother, before standing on two feet and returning to the voice that calls him.

He won’t go near the path. As fascinating as the dark magician of the castle is, he’s heard rumor that little boys are the main ingredient in his dark spells, and he wants to play in the waves forever and a day. He has no time for dark magic.

He trots by a few stragglers on the beach, some seeking solace in the otherwise silent sea, others walking just to see how far their feel will take them. He waves to them all but only one waves back, and as the boy turns, he watches the man make his way to the path he himself had avoided, and turn into it to walk through the woods.

Perhaps a leper seeking healing, then. He had been covered in rags.

The boy watches just a moment more before calling back to his father, and picking up his pace, racing the dog back to where they’re missed.

"Someone to see you, sir."

The voice rings across the library, dust-thick and empty but for the books that reside there and the man who might as well. Hannibal does not raise his attention from the tome spread across the table before him, like so many piled and open alongside it, parchments scattered between the stacks.

His jaw tenses, and this alone is nearly enough to send the servant from the doorway, but he remains as Hannibal intones, "I have no appointments."

"He asked for you by name."

"A prankster, then, if cleverer than most who do not bother to learn it. Send him away."

He lingers in the doorway a moment more, and finally Hannibal lifts his eyes. They reflect nearly red from the candlelight that illuminates the space, gleaming bright from beneath lank blonde hair.

"Was there something else? I believe I made myself cl-"

"He appears unwell," the servant interjects, averting his eyes to the stone floor.

"And?"

"And -"

Hannibal sets aside his pencil, and folds his hands together in a semblance of patience.

The man swallows hard, and spits the words out in a rush. "And your father said it was your duty to treat the ill."

"Did he."

A blink upwards, until he catches sight of Hannibal's eyes again and pales. "Y-Yes. As an alchemist. As a doctor." Hannibal does not respond, and the man turns to leave, flinching as he hears the young count's chair grind against the stone.

"It was your mistake to let him in, and I will see him only to amend your error. Do not defy my wishes again. I will tell you if I have an appointment, and only then will you let anyone inside. Until such time as that, give them food and send them on their way. Am I clear?"

"Very, sir. My apologies."

"Go. Show him to the sitting room."

He departs without hesitating again, and Hannibal turns his gaze back to the papers spread before him. Every book more useless than the last, endless admonitions that make no more difference to him now than they did then. His fingers curl in the parchment on which he was sketching out another sigil, and tighten it into a ball, discarded to the floor among its unworthy peers.

The castle is all but abandoned now, his remaining family departed for their summer home, less to enjoy it and more to not be here where the walls have grown so cold and every sound echoes through the silence. Enough servants still to staff it and keep it from falling truly to ruin, and Hannibal, a pale spectre who haunts its halls, sleepless and distant.

He stops by his room to shoulder into his coat, rather than meet the man in his shirtsleeves, and buttons it carefully in the mirror. The angles of his face, sharper than they have ever been, shine wan in the light that filters through drawn curtains, and he turns away in displeasure to make his way down the stairs.

The man is as the servant had said, hunched with the appearance of illness, silent and still as he waits. Hannibal notes that he does not seek around the room, he does not artlessly try to palm one of the many expensive fittings in the room and then pretend ignorance.

Perhaps he will help. If only because he had made an oath, and that holds him true to the only other thing he has loved in this world than the two he lost.

"You asked for me."

"Sir," comes the response. "Doctor Lecter, I did."

It is unfamiliar but not rough, a warm sound, almost gentle if not for the weariness life brings with it.

"What ails you?"

The stranger shifts, his hood too long to see his face, but he does not stand.

"I have come a long way to see if you could know,” he says at length. "I find myself in endless wandering and wondering, aimless and adrift in my soul."

Hannibal sighs and doesn't hide the evident displeasure. If not a prankster then perhaps a fool. He could not heal a troubled soul. He could not find evidence of one. Perhaps he would let the man talk, listen to him, and send him on his way.

"All your life?" he humors him, hands behind his back in a tight stretch to hold himself upright.

"One year,” the stranger corrects. "When I first learned to walk."

“Tea, please,” Hannibal instructs in a low voice to the servant who showed the man into the room. “For two. Something small and portable to eat.”

He draws a breath and turns back to the man, huddled in ragged clothing, layers upon layers. His thoughts begin to wander to the sores that he while inevitably find beneath it, those that can be treated and those that have worn too deep, to affect his mind so.

Hannibal blinks back upward and hums. “A year ago, only? You were unable to walk at all before that?”

“All my life,” the man answers, echoes back.

He cannot cure the ailments that trouble the man inwardly, but perhaps he lend some strength to the physical. “It is a wondrous thing to be able to walk, let alone after the passage of a malady such as that. To run and feel the earth beneath your feet. But in doing so the world itself becomes open to you,” he suggests, “and all its hardships and faults. Your condition is the human one, to feel as though we are but flotsam, helpless to make our own choices, and cast wherever the sea may throw us.”

A laugh, then, and this soft as well, not harsh or displeased, but almost youthful. 

"The sea rarely allows one to be helpless," the man responds. “It is never directionless, never unfair. It guides and supports. Only once in the water I had known pain, and that was pain of my own making."

The servant returns with what his master had asked for and Hannibal steps up to serve the tea, sweet-smelling with flowers and berries as it steams in front of his guest.

"I have known much pain on land, and seen it."

Hannibal considers the stranger, his words. Wonders and what they mean beyond the literal. He knows some aches of the bones are taken away by water, by the sensation of floating and drifting, weight taken from them for a while. Perhaps he means to seek healing this way. A learned man, at least.

"You come to me to seek the sea?"

He asks, and the man shakes his head, reaches into the folds of his cloak to get something, perhaps a parchment with instructions, perhaps payment that Hannibal will not accept. He comes back, instead, with just a shell. A small blue shell that Hannibal aches to see, here, again.

"I come to seek the man who once sought it from me."

There is light through the dark, dark forest in Hannibal’s eyes, unblinking as he looks on the little shell, and the safety of the trail gives way to the sand.

“Go, please,” he intones softly, and the tea is left by the servant who closes the door quietly in leaving. Hannibal looks towards the man who holds his hand outstretched, offering his own in return to take the shell. The warmth still held in it tugs out a sigh and he closes tired fingers around it, to hide the shaking that has overcome him.

“And if you lie?” Hannibal asks, stepping closer.

The man, still seated, presses a hand to his face beneath the hood.

“I cannot lie.”

As the sea wipes clear the sand, the years fall from Hannibal’s face and he reaches to slide the hood free of the man seated before him, breath caught in his throat.

Blue eyes, bright as the shell, as the ocean, as the sky on a cloudless day, and a smile so bright Hannibal sinks to his knees to taste it, hands on either side of Will’s face, holding him close, holding him there, against him, safe, alive, real.

"Will," he breathes. "Will, my Will."

Familiar hands find his hair and card through it, slip to gently hold Hannibal's shoulders, splay against his back.

A year older, improbably, without logic or reason but Hannibal needs neither, needs nothing but the man before him who had given himself entirely, for him.

"I'm here," breathed soft, breathed warm, and Will grins before kissing Hannibal again, deep and hot and holding the man so close they both ache. "I was prepared to walk my entire life to find you," he whispers, "but the sea kindly tossed me closer."

Hannibal lets his hands press to Will’s cheeks, flushed bright, his neck where his pulse races, to the shoulders he has kissed so many times and the arms that have held him, lower, mindless of the tattered clothing to rest his hands not on the strong, soft tail that once held such fascination for him, but on two legs that do instead.

It does not matter how, or why, or when or where. Will is here again, by some clause of magic unaccounted for, by some blessing that Hannibal can scarcely comprehend or care about at all when Will presses a kiss to his brow, and Hannibal shudders to feel the anguish disperse from him like wind, like sand.

Like seafoam.

“They say that I am evil now,” Hannibal tells him. “Cruel and twisted, possessed. They say that I gave up my soul to the dead.” He swallows hard, and the tremor in his voice becomes a laugh. “And they say that I gave up my heart to the sea.”

Will grins, soothes him and strokes his hair back from his face.

"You cannot give up your soul when you have already so selflessly given it to another. Just as my sacrifice allowed me to live, when you owned my heart." His smile softens, and Will kisses Hannibal, gentle and warm. "I claim your heart, it cannot go to the sea,” he promises him, kisses him again. And when Will pulls away this time, he is grinning wide once more.

"But when _we_ do," he adds, "you must teach me to swim."

**Author's Note:**

> Just some fun notes to consider:
> 
> \- The Persian word “برایم بمان” or “maneli” means both “mermaid” and “stay with me”  
> \- Mermaids were mentioned in alchemical texts, but never explained as to what they were for, so we made it up


End file.
